IN the tea-rooms at Westminster, Labour MPs are discreetly talking about getting rid of Tony Blair.

So claims George Galloway, the anti-Iraq war backbencher, who says he is no liar.

For the first time in eight years, he disclosed, MPs think it is time for a Labour relaunch.

"There was even talk from two members - neither of them on the usual suspects list - about the possibility of a leadership challenge, and that sort of mutinous talk," he added.

On this issue, I believe Gorgeous George. There is a strong under-current of dissatisfaction with the performance of the Prime Minister since his second landslide victory last summer.

One political scandal seems to succeed another. The government is exposed as lying and incompetent. If the Tories had even a half-way decent leader, instead of The Mekon Mark 2, New Labour would be in big trouble.

But they haven't, so Blair gets away with it.

Mostly. But the polls are starting to register voter dissatisfaction with his lacklustre premiership. It isn't Teflon Tony any more. The coating is wearing off.

So it's not surprising that, well away from the prying eyes of political journalists, MPs are now thinking the unthinkable: Tony must go.

Naturally, Downing Street will dismiss such talk as wild hyperbole, or, more likely, "froth" (I don't suppose Alastair Campbell knows what hyperbole is, though he uses it every day).

And some readers will accuse me of being anti-Blair on principle. Well, it is true I did not vote for him in the 1994 leadership election (I supported Margaret Beckett), and I am deeply suspicious of his New Labour project. Blair can't even say the word "socialism". He splits it into two and says "social-ism", as if it were something dirty. I don't trust him, and I don't believe in him.

But he has been a winner. And the Labour Party has not had very many of them in my lifetime. That's why I do not believe that the mutinous talk will get very far. At this stage, anyway.

However, once the writing starts to appear on the wall, it reappears no matter how many times the authorities rub it off.

Blair is aware of the discontent. He has his spies in the tea room - though with Gabby George around, he doesn't need them.

He will not do a John Major, and challenge his critics to put up or shut up. His self-esteem is too brittle for that. He can't bear to think that people might not love him.

But he will have to do something to revive his flagging credibility. On Tuesday, he made a speech that Number 10 trailed as an important statement of the leader's political philosophy.

It was a string of platitudes from beginning to end. And the fact that he made it to an invited audience of cronies behind closed doors at the London School of Economics tells you everything about the bunker mentality that has overtaken his premiership. He will have to do better if he is to survive into a third term of office.